Thanks to Merlin Mann’s recent series of podcasts on GTD, I’m getting back on the GTD wagon (for about the 100th time). I read Getting Things Done in 2002 and have been trying to implement it ever since. I’ve had periods where I followed it religiously for a month at a time, but it’s never completely stuck. From what I hear, this is normal and I accept it now. This won’t be the last time that I restart GTD. Even when I’m not actively using GTD, I think in GTD terms, thinking about next actions and projects and ruthlessly placing projects on the backburner. I just have trouble sticking with the entire GTD workflow, especially the ubiquitous capture (I trust my brain too much) and the weekly reviews (they just seem too painful). I’ve used every online and offline tool in the book, too. Despite not doing so great with GTD, I’d say my life is an overwhelming success.

So why try again? Each time I have gotten back on the bandwagon, I’ve had a surge in productivity. I wrote more. I made some clear decisions on issues that I had been procrastinating on. I wouldn’t be surprised if each of my major life improvements over the past 10 years was associated with a time where I got back on the GTD wagon. I can’t prove that, because I don’t keep enough details, but I always feel better and think clearer when I’m on GTD.

But, I’ve failed so many times… what kind of hubris makes me think I’ll get it this time? “Fall down seven times, get up eight." Parenthood has taught this to me. Of course we don’t expect our kids to learn each skill the first time they try. We expect that walking and reading and writing and bike-riding will take time, multiple efforts, and multiple failures. But eventually they will get it. Yet, with each failure, kids get upset (to varying degrees). The answer at that point is not to tell them to give up. Yet, that’s what I do to myself. So, I’m going to treat myself like a kid and let myself fail, understanding that each failure will get me closer to that one time where I will succeed.

I think twitter and facebook stunt my writing. The more that I read tweets, the more self-conscious I get when I write. Not that my writing is all that original, but I still feel that it is something that comes from me. I worry so much about presenting ideas of others as my own without even remembering that I had seen the ideas before. In the old days, the things that I read were long form. Books, articles, maybe blog posts. They each left an impression on me, maybe good, maybe bad, but I had a sense where they were coming from. When I wrote I could reliably say where the inspiration for my idea had come from. Now with twitter, I see all these ideas and thoughts, some of which are interesting, but few of which leave a lasting impression on me. So now I have this fear that the things that I am considering my own ideas are actually the ideas of others, improperly attributed. Of course, that’s silly. No idea is original, but it’s just serious enough to stifle my writing. Because, as a writer, I am the scaredy-cat of all scaredy-cats and any criticism of my writing bites deep to the heart. I also know that this is something that I just need to get over. You cannot express ideas without inviting criticism. I also don’t just want to let criticism fall off me. I want to learn from critics. But saying all that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. Even writing this post, I feel like a fraud. I’ve said that I’m a writer a couple times up there, but what evidence do I have to support that claim? Most of my blog posts are so simple or technical or repetitive. Nothing that would strike me as an ‘original idea’. This whole post makes it seem like I am more important or better than I really am.

What is my point with all this? I want to be able to write. I know that there are people out there who could benefit from things in my brain (maybe not a lot). I know that there are people out there who can help me (in ways that I can’t even expect). So, I want to write and I want it to be freely flowing and I don’t want to force myself to feel that what I am writing is useful or authoritative or perfect. I apologize to you, Vinod, my biggest critic. I know that you are cringing inside because you’re thinking that anyone who reads this will think that you are so full of yourself for even considering yourself a writer. But, this is my first step in letting my guard down to get this blog flowing. Because I do believe that writing is healthy and will make me a better person.

In addition to committing to blogging more frequently, I’m also going to try a twitter hiatus for a week and see what happens.

Now that we have 3 kids, I’m always internally comparing one to the other. Sure that’s not healthy and will probably breed resentment in them during their teenage years, but what’s a bad parent to do?

I need an app that takes 2 kids' birthdays and then shows me what day it was when the older kid was the age that the younger kid is now. Wow, that’s a confusing sentence. In simpler terms, if I have a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, then the app would show me the day that the 3-year-old was 1.

Then, I want the app to take that date and go through all of my personal files (photos, notes, twitter stream, facebook stream, etc.) and show me what was happening in our life around that day.

In short, it would show a snapshot of what our life was like when the older kid was the age that the younger kid is now. I’d call it WhenIWasYourAge or something catchy like that.

Seems simple enough to build, but I don’t see myself getting to it anytime soon. Smart people say to set your ideas free and if they love you they’ll come back. (Wait, I think I’m mixing metaphors here).

I’m not the handiest guy in the world, so I’m pretty proud that I was able to fix a flat tire on Kavi’s 12" bicycle.

DISCLAIMER: I have almost no idea what I’m doing. Follow my instructions at your peril.

I’ve fixed flats before, but it’s been a long time. Fixing it on such a tiny bike was a lot harder than I thought. The manual makes it seem so simple. “Remove the wheel, take the tube out, patch the tube and then replace the tube and tire.” Right… I got stuck at step 1. Removing the wheel isn’t straightforward. Most of the videos available online focus on adult-sized bikes which have quick-release tires. You pull a release lever back and then pull the tire off. Kids bikes have bolts instead of quick-release levers. You have to loosen the bolts, but you don’t have to take the bolts completely off. You also have to take off the plastic chain guard that prevents kids from rubbing their legs against the chain. Finally, there’s this little metal piece that attaches the wheel to the frame. I think it’s there for the pedal-brake to work. In any case, you have to take that off. Once the wheel is loosened, you have to unhook the wheel from the chain. This is also easier in big bikes which have multiple gears, making it possible to place the chain in a position to easily get it off the wheel. In a kid’s bike, it’s harder. Once I loosened the bolts on both sides of the wheel, I pushed the wheel a little forward, which loosened the chain and made it easy to release from the chain.

The next difficulty was getting the tube out of the tire. All the videos make this seem so easy. Place a tire lever in the tire to pull it over the rim. Put another tire lever in and slide it around the rim to get the rest of the tire out. Kavi’s tires are so tight that this was impossible. I could get the first tire lever in, but when I put the second tire lever in, it was completely immovable. There was no way that I was going to be able to slide it anywhere. I finally found a website where they recommended using a third tire lever. Put the first two in a few inches apart. Then put the third one in another inch away from the second one. Finally remove the middle one and move it an inch past the third one. In this way, I was able to get the tire off eventually.

I then got the tube out and found the leak. I placed a patch on it, but when I reinflated the tire, the leaking air just pushed it’s way through the patch. I tried roughing up the area with the roughing tool, but that didn’t help. Finally, I resorted to the layman’s favorite tool: duct tape. I placed the patch, then wrapped it with duct tape. It’s held together for a few months now.

Hopefully Kavi will graduate to the next size bike before my handiwork breaks down. On another note, Kavi was easily able to pick up the basics of riding a bike by following the REI guide. I took off the training wheels and the pedals, which allowed him to get the feeling of balancing the bike without having to keep his feet on the pedals. Once he got that part, it was relatively easy for him to balance with the pedals on. He also proved to be a much tougher kid than I was. Everytime he fell, he got right back on.

I’m not an OS X programmer, but I’ve really enjoyed 2 recent episodes of the NSBrief podcast. First was Mark Dalrymple’s interview. Here was my 140 character description:

So much geeky fun in @borkware's interview. AOLserver, dtrace, OpenDoc, MPW, need I go on? nsbrief.com/59-mark-dalrym…

— Vinod Kurup (@vkurup) August 16, 2012

Today, I listened to Mark Aufflick’s interview where he talks eloquently about starting your own business. I love the perspective he had on his first business and how shutting it down gave him the necessary (though painful) experience to make his current business work. He also talked about the importance of computing history especially given the availability of interesting subjects. He ended with great advice on the importance of professionalism. Paraphrased: “Make sure your team is the most professional side of any relationship.”

I know Mark and Mark from the OpenACS glory days and it’s great to hear how well they’re doing. Computing history was a prominent part of both talks. I think this is important. Old ideas are always new again. Some of the ideas that these pioneers had were only limited by the horsepower we had to work with at the time. Now thanks to Moore’s law, those limitations are gone, so we should re-investigate those ideas. Or maybe we’re all just getting old and like to talk about the good-old-days. :-) It’s nice to see that they both mentioned the OpenACS period of their programming lives as important. It certainly was for me. It was also great to hear Mark Aufflick’s voice for the first time, even though I feel like he’s been a friend for many years.

(Note: See the bottom of this post for updates)

I was honored to to give my “Emacs for Python Programming” talk at the inaugural PyCarolinas conference. The conference was a huge success in every way, thanks to the efforts of Calvin Spealman, et. al. I promised that I would post my Emacs setup, so here it is.

Step 0: Prerequisites

This may work with other setups, but here’s what I tested:

• Linux
• Emacs version 24
• python 2.7 or 3.3
• pip
• virtualenv
• virtualenvwrapper
• git

Step 1: Clear out any previous customization

As evidenced by the numerous blog posts documenting how to set this up, it’s not straightforward. I recommend starting from scratch to make sure everything is set up properly. Once you have it working, then you can customize it. Make sure to start these commands in your home directory.

vinod:~$ mkdir old-emacs
vinod:~$ mv .emacs .emacs.d old-emacs/

Step 2: Set up initial Emacs configuration

Create an empty .emacs.d directory and a subdirectory named with your username. My username is vinod, so we’ll create a directory structure called .emacs.d/vinod/. The emacs-starter-kit tells emacs to automatically load any elisp files from that special directory, so you’ll always have a place to drop custom elisp files.

vinod:~$ mkdir -p ~/.emacs.d/$USER

Create a file named .emacs.d/init.el with the following contents:

Step 3: Create a python virtualenv

We’ll keep all the python-side customization in a virtualenv named default. It’s important that the name you choose is the same as the name in the (virtualenv-workon) command in line 45 of Step 2.

vinod:~$ mkvirtualenv -p python2 default

After it does its thing, your shell prompt should change, indicating that your new virtualenv is activated

(default)vinod:~$

Step 4: Install Pymacs

Pymacs is a really cool piece of software that sets up a 2 way communication between Emacs and Python, allowing you to control Emacs with python commands rather than elisp commands. It requires a python piece (Pymacs.py) and an Emacs piece (pymacs.el). Unfortunately, they’re not installable via pip or package.el, but installation is easy enough.

(default)vinod:~$ mkdir src
(default)vinod:~/src$ cd src
(default)vinod:~/src$ git clone git://github.com/pinard/Pymacs.git
(default)vinod:~/src$ cd Pymacs

# check to make sure tests pass
(default)vinod:~/src/Pymacs$ make check

# install it (Be sure you're inside your virtualenv!)
(default)vinod:~/src/Pymacs$ make install

# install the emacs extension
(default)vinod:~/src/Pymacs$ cp pymacs.el ~/.emacs.d/$USER/

Step 5: Install other python packages

These helper packages are easier to install:

(default)vinod:~$ pip install pyflakes pep8

The pyflakes and pep8 packages check your code as you type using Emacs' flymake mode. Now, deactivate your virtualenv.

(default)vinod:~$ deactivate
vinod:~$

Step 6: Install pycheckers

Flymake is the part of Emacs that checks your code for errors on the fly. It calls a shell script called pycheckers, so you need to have a script by that name in your shell’s PATH. Here’s mine (~/bin/pycheckers):

#!/bin/bash

pyflakes "$1"
pep8 --repeat "$1"
true

Step 7: Install python-mode.el

As I mentioned in my talk, there are multiple Python modes available, but I recommend using the one named python-mode.el, which is developed at http://launchpad.net/python-mode. It does periodically get uploaded to Marmalade, but the auto-completion using pycomplete doesn’t work well on the version that is there now (6.0.10), so I recommend that you manually download and install the latest stable version (6.0.12). I’ll update this post once a stable working version gets uploaded to Marmalade or Melpa.

vinod:~$ cd ~/.emacs.d/$USER
vinod:~/.emacs.d/vinod$ curl -L https://launchpad.net/python-mode/trunk/6.0.12/+download/python-mode.el-6.0.12.tar.gz | tar xz

Step 8: Test it all out

Launch emacs and open a python file named test.py. Type the following:

import os
os.path.jo

Wait at this point. You should see auto-completion of os.path.join followed shortly by a yellow popup showing documentation of that method. Hitting return should accept the completion. Then type ( and you should see the method signature in the minibuffer.

Move the cursor over any letter in join. Hit ‘F1’. A window should popup with the docstring for os.path.join. Hit ‘F2’. A new window should be opened with the code for os.path.join. Hit ‘F3’. You’ll be prompted to enter the name of any python command, and Emacs will show you the docstring.

Type the string ‘blah’ and hit return. The string should be highlighted in pink and if you mouseover it, the minibuffer will say undefined name 'blah'. That’s flymake working for you.

Hit C-c C-c and the buffer should be sent to a Python interpreter and you’ll be dropped in the REPL after the code has been loaded. Any errors in the code will be reported.

If all of this works, then CONGRATULATIONS!!! If not, let me know and I’ll see if I can help debug.

Step 9: Customize

All of this is customizable in hundreds of ways. Try M-x customize-group RET python-mode RET to see how.

Step 10: How to create a new python project

Whenever you want to create a new Python project, you have do the following:

Create a new virtualenv

vinod:~$ mkvirtualenv newproject

Install pymacs into that virtualenv

(newproject)vinod:~$ cd ~/src/Pymacs
(newproject)vinod:~/src/Pymacs$ make install

Install the other pip modules

(newproject)vinod:~/src/Pymacs$ pip install pyflakes pep8

Switch to that virtualenv in emacs

M-x virtualenv-workon RET newproject/ RET

Issues

Changing virtualenvs doesn’t restart Pymacs

For the most part, this won’t affect much, but if you move from a Python2 project to a Python3 project, you may have problems. The workaround is to call M-x pymacs-terminate-services, then M-x virtualenv-workon to change your virtualenv, and then finally M-x load-pycomplete to restart pymacs and pycomplete.

Latest stable version of python-mode.el isn’t on Melpa

I’d much prefer to just load python-mode using the built-in Emacs package manager.

Pymacs installation is harder than it needs to be

I wish Pymacs could be installed by a 2 step process

1. pip install Pymacs
2. M-x package-install RET pymacs RET

Which pycheckers to use?

My script uses pep8 and pyflakes. There are a lot of other options out there and I do not know which is best. See this post for more details.

Not using ropemacs any more

In my talk, I used ropemacs. In this setup, I have decided against it. I was mostly using it for code-completion and documentation lookup, but I like pycomplete.el better for those purposes. It’s included in python-mode and it shows method signatures as you type. Ropemacs does have other features such as project management (easily jumping to files in the same project), and refactoring (changing variable names throughout project). I haven’t used those, so I decided not to install ropemacs.

Project management not included

I haven’t yet decided which package to use for this. I’ll probably try projectile, but there are many other options, some lightweight (ropemacs, eproject, pony-mode) and some heavyweight (ecb, CEDET).

References

I gleaned knowledge from all of the following, in no particular order.

• Using Pymacs and virtualenv together (slacy.com)
• Using Ropemacs for autocompletion (yilmazhuseyin.com)
• How to use Rope to automatically change virtualenv for you
• Ropemacs and virtualenv (almostobsolete.net)
• The post that turned me on to pycomplete.el (rwdev.eu)
• Perfect Python Environment (2009)
• Lot’s of great ‘advanced-beginner’ emacs tips
• Using python.el rather than python-mode.el
• Using IPython, pylookup and more (pedrokroger.net) - I need to look into this post some more.
• EmacsWiki Python Page
• Python.el, ropemacs, and a little django tip at the end
• Virtualenv.el (something similar is included in python-mode.el
• Python Development Environment - Looks promising, just wish there was some documentation on how to use it.
• Emacs for Cocoa Development - OK, not at all related to python, but some great insight from an Emacs (and all-around) wizard. Don’t miss the ranting at the end of the page.
• Python.el basics
• Using PDB in Emacs
• Ryan McGuire’s .emacs.d
• AutoComplete for Python (enigmacurry.com)
• The original Python IDE post (enigmacurry.com)

Updates

2012-10-27

Thanks to @danpoirier and @gregnewman for testing. I initially recommended using the master branch of python-mode.el, but now I recommend using the latest stable release (as of now) which is version 6.0.12 to avoid problems loading Pymacs. There’s a bug on 6.0.12 with virtualenv-workon that requires you to put a trailing slash after the name of your virtualenv, so I’ve updated the init.el file above to account for those changes.

Autocomplete Mode is an Emacs mode that tries to guess what word you’re typing and provide auto-completion. Recently, it started failing in simple scenarios.

It can use various ‘sources’ to try to figure out what you’re about to type. The simplest source is ac-source-dictionary which is a simple list of words. If you start typing any of those words, it will try to autocomplete them for you. Normally, you’d put those words in a file, with each word on a separate line, but for testing purposes, you can also add them manually using an elisp function. Here’s the test that failed for me:

(add-to-list 'ac-user-dictionary "foobar@example.com")

That adds the email address to the dictionary. Then, typing ‘foo’ in any buffer, should offer to autocomplete the entire email address. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working.

To debug, I typed ‘foo’ and then did M-x auto-complete, which forces auto-complete to look for a completion. This resulted in an error in the Minibuffer:

ac-yasnippet-candidates: Symbol's function definition is void: yas/current-snippet-table

This led me to check which ‘sources’ autocomplete was trying to use: C-h v ac-sources

(ac-source-features ac-source-functions ac-source-yasnippet
 ac-source-variables ac-source-symbols ac-source-abbrev
 ac-source-dictionary ac-source-words-in-same-mode-buffers)

So, autocomplete is looking through each one of those sources, trying to find possible words I might be typing. The third one is called ac-source-yasnippet, which seems to be where my error is coming from.

So, I looked into the yasnippet source code and found that, indeed, there was no function named yas/current-snippet-table. That function has been renamed to yas--get-snippets-table in version 0.8.0, but autocomplete is still relying on the old function name. (RANT: Don’t rename functions that others might be using without providing some kind of alias, at least temporarily) I looked at the code for autosnippet on github and noted that the latest version has been fixed to use the new code, but it hasn’t yet been released on MELPA. Until it is, the quick solution is to remove ac-source-yasnippet from ac-sources.

(delq 'ac-source-yasnippet ac-sources)

Then typing ‘foo’ autocompletes to ‘foobar@example.com’.

It seems that autocomplete should be more forgiving of errors in any specific ‘source’, passing it up to use other sources. Alternatively, it should fail loudly when there’s an error, so that I can know to fix or remove the offending ‘source’.

I was a huge Apple fan growing up and IBM was Apple’s enemy. Buying an IBM computer would have been unthinkable.

Well, the unthinkable has happened. Of course IBM doesn’t make laptops anymore, but their computers live on under the Lenovo name. I am the proud owner of a new Lenovo Thinkpad T420S. I love this computer. It’s an ugly black boxy thing, but it’s light (4 lbs), quiet and speedy. And the keyboard is just pure awesome. That’s the main reason that I bought the T420S as opposed to the current T430 line. The new line has the chicklet keyboard that is being used on all laptops these days. The T420 is the last one with the old-fashioned clicky keyboard, which I love.

I also feel very lucky to get the deal that I got. I bought it from Lenovo’s Outlet store, which had about thirty T420s’s in stock when I was shopping. This one was about half the price of the others, by my estimation. It’s so underpriced that I’m wondering if I’m missing an obvious flaw, but I don’t see it. (Please let me know if you do!)

Here’s a comparison between the specs of my computer compared to one that was available at the Outlet store on October 4th, 2012:

The RAM is better on the other model, but Windows 7 Professional is an upgrade on my model. I don’t really understand why mine was so cheap, but I’m pretty happy about it!

I added another 4G of RAM, moved Windows to a VirtualBox image and installed Arch Linux with Xmonad. It takes about 10 seconds to get from the BIOS screen to a working computer. I’ll post some info on my setup in a future post.

Anika, Kavi, Mala and I are so proud to announce the birth of healthy, happy baby boy!

His name is Avik Puri Kurup and he was born at 11:01 PM on September 3rd, 2012. He is 6lbs, 12oz and about 19 inches long.

A few pics:

Avik arrives Proud Dad

And the obligatory pseudo-nostalgic photo:

Nostalgic Avik

Mom and Baby are doing great! Thanks for all the well wishes and support!

Time for some pop philosophy. I’ve never thought too deeply about the concept of free will. Of course we have free will! I chose to live my life a certain way. I could choose to live a different way. It is my free will to choose how I live. I’ve never thought about it more deeply than that.

I recently read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein and I was forced to think more deeply about free will. The biography is excellent. It gives more depth to Einstein, who, despite his flaws, is still a heroic figure. One day, I’ll do a proper review, but the piece that struck me the hardest was Einstein’s views on free will. He didn’t believe that free will existed, and not only that, he didn’t even to seem to think that this was a controversial position. It appears that Isaacson didn’t either, because he didn’t spend much time on that part of Einstein’s character. But, it seemed so strange to me, since I assumed that we all have free will.

So, I read Sam Harris’s e-book Free Will, in which he concisely explains why free will is a myth. Take any conscious decision that you might make. Let’s say you choose at this moment to go eat a pizza. Do you have the free will to make that choice? Well, you certainly can go eat pizza, but the question is if you had the free will to do it. What were the steps that led to making that choice. Somewhere in your brain, a certain set of neurons fired to trigger the idea in your mind to have a pizza. How did those neurons fire? Either there was a conscious decision to have that thought, or it was an unconscious decision that you didn’t control. And if it was a conscious decision, then you can take that back a step further and ask how that decision occurred. Eventually, you will have to start at some unconscious (or subconscious) event which triggered the series of events which eventually led to your decision to have a pizza. No matter how far back you can track the conscious trail that led to a pizza forming in your mind, eventually you are left with an unconscious starting point. Certainly all of these thoughts are heavily influenced by your life experiences. If you’ve never seen or heard of a pizza, there’s a zero percent chance that you’ll think of a eating a pizza. But all of those life experiences are themselves the result of conscious and unconscious decisions, all of which we ultimately have no specific control over.

Every thought you have is the only thought you could have at that moment. It is the result of all of the life experiences and thoughts that you have had up to that moment. If you consciously try to “create” an original thought, just to prove that you have free will, well… you can’t. Because that decision itself originated from somewhere in your subconscious, and is therefore something that you don’t have conscious control over.

In addition to this theoretical rationalization against the concept of free will, Harris describes multiple studies from neuroscience which show that neurons fire in our subconscious well before we develop the urge to act. Examples:

• The famous Libet Experiment from 1983
• Decoding and predicting intentions. Skip to the the short section titled ‘Implications for the free-will debate?’
• Internally Generated Preactivation of Single Neurons in Human Medial Frontal Cortex Predicts Volition. The neuroscience in this article is pretty deep. I only watched the video abstract.

Bottom line: I’m convinced that I don’t have the free will that I thought I did. The question is how this should affect my life. It could be depressing. If every thought of mine originates in a way that I don’t control, then am I just being steered through life? It makes my accomplishments in life seem less “worthy”. On the other hand, it can be quite freeing. My path through life is determined. Perhaps I shouldn’t be worrying so much about every decision, because I know that they’re not really “my” decisions to make. It can also give you more empathy for others, knowing that they also have no will do anything but what they are doing.

It’s still a confusing topic, because I “feel” like I have options in life and I “feel” like taking different options will change my life. That part is true. The part that isn’t true is that I have any control over the range of available options, nor over the specific option that I choose. Even Harris seems to be a little conflicted here:

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life.

The question is how do you accomplish a ‘creative change of inputs’, if you don’t have the will to do so? I guess the idea is that while I don’t have any control over the thoughts that arise in my brain, I do have perceived control over my decisions. With whatever power my conscious brain has, I can choose things that will improve my life, with the hope that exposure to new experiences will ‘change the inputs’ to my subconscious brain. Ugh, just thinking about how this all works makes my brain hurt. I guess this is why I never studied philosophy before. :-)

Free Will is short and cheap and I highly recommend it.